


For Your Own Good

by thisprettywren



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Confined/Caged, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-17
Updated: 2011-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-14 20:34:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisprettywren/pseuds/thisprettywren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd taken to shouting at the walls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Your Own Good

**Author's Note:**

> For this prompt on SherlockBBC-fic: After TGG, Mycroft has Sherlock and John picked up and placed in a secure, 24/7 monitored flat. It's the same flat Mycroft kept Sherlock incarcerated in for four months when he was still trying to force his brother to detox against his will and it's just as escape-proof as it was seven years ago.

John started awake with a jerk and groaned against the pain in his skull. His brain felt as though it were being squeezed in a vice. He kept his eyes shut tight, trying to remember what he’d been drinking the night before that he’d have such a bloody  _pounding_ hangover.

The distant sound of Sherlock’s voice eventually penetrated the haze enveloping his consciousness and John finally forced open his eyes, only to be confronted with an unfamiliar ceiling. He was lying on top of the quilt of a likewise-unfamiliar bed. He groaned again and swung his legs over the edge, putting his feet on the floor and burying his head in his hands.

“John.  _John._ ” Sherlock’s voice was loud and insistent, and John cracked open his eyes to see those of his flatmate peering into them from a disconcertingly close distance.

He started back a few inches, throwing his hand back on the bed to maintain his balance. “ _Jesus,_ Sherlock.” A sharp pain was shooting up his arm where he’d thrown it back, but John couldn’t quite pin his finger on its source.  _Must have been quite the night, then._

Apparently satisfied with whatever he’d seen on John’s face, Sherlock was already whirling away, pacing the room in agitation. “Idiot,” he muttered to himself, “using the same dosage, he should’ve known. You’d think he’d be more practised at this by now, you really—“

“What are you—” John’s tongue felt thick in his mouth. He ached, astoundingly, all over.

Sherlock stilled abruptly, interrupting him. “You’re all right, John?” It was a question, more or less, but John was seeing Sherlock’s face properly for the first time. The whole left side of it, cheekbone and jawline, were dark purple-black with bruises, and there was a network of bandages disappearing under the neck of his dressing gown and reappearing at the sleeve, where it covered every inch of his right hand. John raised his own hand to run it through his hair, encountering a thick padding of bandage.

John shook his head, trying to clear it, and rubbed his hand over his mouth. The faint scent of chlorine clinging to his skin sparked a chain of memories that all but threw him forward off the bed. He landed more or less on his feet, startled by a stab of pain in his leg. The shout he heard was probably his own, he realized half a second too late to stop himself.

The pool. The explosion. Sirens, lights, questions, blankets. Lestrade was there, looking hollow-eyed. Donovan too; Anderson, thankfully, hadn’t been needed. Then Mycroft’s arrival and a dark car to take them back to 221b… but the sequence ended there, and John couldn’t remember reaching the flat.

The two men stared at each other. John could feel his mouth gaping open slightly, lower jaw pushed slightly forward, a habit he’d developed in Afghanistan to prevent himself from grinding his teeth under stress. He closed his mouth and licked his lips.

“Right. Yeah. I’m okay,” he said, far too late to be convincing. “You, too?”

Sherlock quirked his mouth and resumed his pacing. “What? Yeah, fine,” he said, distractedly, turning out the door of the bedroom. “Two murders to plan,” he said, in the same tone he might have used to say he’d placed an order for Indian takeaway, and disappeared into the hall.

“Er, Sherlock,” John said, trying to ignore his protesting muscles as he followed his flatmate into the unfamiliar hallway. It wasn’t an unpleasant place, on the whole, if a bit stark; the hallway opened into a largeish room, featuring overfull bookcases and edged by a decently-equipped kitchen. The walls were painted an greenish off-white colour that reminded John unpleasantly of a hospital, and were otherwise bare; two armchairs and a sofa were arranged on one side of the room, a dining table on the other.

Sherlock was standing by the window, peering out through the edge of the drawn curtain. The look on his face was the careful blank that John knew from long experience indicated a dangerous mood.

John took a deep breath and plunged right in. “Just what in the bloody hell is going on?”

Sherlock’s eyes darted to meet his, quickly, before shifting back to the window just as quickly. Long, pale fingers moved to flick the blind aside, and John saw the thick bars, spaced two inches apart, that covered the glass.

“Mycroft,” Sherlock said, and it sounded like a curse.

John rubbed his hand over his face. “Right. That doesn’t. Um. You’re going to have to take it slowly with me, Sherlock,” he said.

Sherlock turned away from the window, one hand in his hair as his long legs carried him swiftly to the kitchen. He came back with a glass of water, pushed it into John’s hand without meeting his eyes, and began a rapid circuit around the living room.

“I was here before,” he said, his voice even lower than usual with anger. “I spent four months here.”

John rolled a mouthful of water around with his tongue, trying to wash the cottony feeling away. “With Mycroft?” he asked, finally.

Sherlock snorted. “Not  _with,_ no.” Both his hands were running rapidly through his dark curls now, and John felt a flutter in the pit of his stomach, a sympathetic reaction to the anxiety evident in his flatmate’s demeanour.

“You know about the. The drugs.” John nodded, getting up to refill his glass from the tap. “Well. Mycroft thought it best he take matters into his own hands. Keep it _private_ , as it were. More… dignified, that way,” he finished, the pause before ‘dignified’ a perfect imitation of Mycroft’s speech patterns. John almost smiled at that, before understanding of the implications hit him.

“Oh. Right. You mean….”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Sherlock stopped his pacing, and his right hand began rubbing absentmindedly at the crook of his left elbow. “Mycroft intends to keep us here. As he would say, for our own good.”

 

* * *

 

The stages John passed through were the usual ones for this sort of situation, he supposed, were it common enough to  _have_ a usual progression of stages: disbelief, anger, confusion, more anger, and rage. Then, unexpectedly, an overwhelming concern for his friend, who seemed to have bypassed all those stages and landed somewhere just this side of a full-blown panic attack.

Over the next hour or so John managed to tease out of Sherlock the story of his time in this flat, seven years earlier, while he was detoxing from “cocaine, mostly,” and some other less-pleasant but equally habit-forming “experiments.” (John let that go, with an effort.) Talking about it, Sherlock grew increasingly agitated and his mind kept spinning out to fixate on details (Mycroft had repainted the moulding, replaced the table after he’d singed a hole in the original one, added curtains to the windows), and John had to keep pulling him back to the topic at hand.

Eventually he let the matter drop because the more Sherlock talked, the more anxious he became, and if John were to be trapped in a flat with a maybe-sociopath, he preferred it be one who wasn’t actively teetering on the brink of literal madness at that actual moment.

It wasn’t helping matters that they’d both been injured in the blast, of course, and were suffering the aftereffects of the sedative Mycroft had used in the abduction. John couldn’t shake the sense that he was in a dream; everything was slower than it ought to be, and he knew he really ought to be  _doing_ things but he just couldn’t work up the momentum to formulate a plan. Leaving Sherlock to his own thoughts John made his way to the back area of the flat, where he found a (disturbingly, he thought) well-stocked medical kit. More a supply closet, really. It seemed Mycroft was relying on him to do the caretaking for both of them for the foreseeable future.

John was examining the supply of bandages, wondering if it would be better to leave Sherlock’s current dressings in place or attempt to remove them to inspect the damage himself, when Sherlock’s voice behind him made him jump.

“Mycroft has planted cameras all through this place,” he said, quietly. “He’ll have it bugged, too.”

“I’d expect little else, from a Holmes bent on abduction,” John said wryly, turning to face him.

“I was awake for hours, before you came out of it,” Sherlock continued as though John hadn’t spoken. “I checked. It’s… as before. Mycroft does know how to keep things guarded, when he needs to. People, as well as information.” Sherlock’s smile might have been a grimace. “There isn’t going to be a way out of here,” he said, and it was the closest to anything like resignation John had heard in his voice.

 

* * *

  
Neither of them slept that first night. John would have liked to—his body felt heavy and his eyes positively burned with exhaustion—but he found it impossible to relax against the anxious feeling that had taken root in his chest. And Sherlock… well, Sherlock might possibly have gone to sleep, he supposed, but the infuriating man wouldn’t even stop his pacing long enough to sit down. The sky was just starting to lighten outside the barred windows when he finally slumped into one the chairs, head in his hands.

John offered to make breakfast, but Sherlock wouldn’t even acknowledge his presence long enough to decline. John gave up and made his way over to the kitchen. He opened the cabinet and peered blearily at the contents before heaving a sigh and shutting the door. He really didn’t have an appetite himself.

“He’ll be watching all of this,” Sherlock said, some time later, his voice loud and startling in the quiet that had taken over the flat. The grey eyes were shadowed, the bruises stark against the pale skin.  _Should do something about those,_ John thought numbly. Sherlock was still speaking. “He did before. Just… watched, the whole time.”

“While you detoxed. Here.” John looked around the flat, trying to picture it. “Alone?”

“More. Dignified,” Sherlock ground out through his teeth, and John suppressed a shudder at the thought.

“Without medical supervision, though. And… four months. It wouldn’t take  _four months_ , Sherlock. And alone. That’s. It’s  _inhumane_.”

Sherlock barked out a laugh, looking up at the hood over the stove behind John’s shoulder.  _Probably a camera there,_ John thought, turning to look, though he couldn’t see anything to give it away.

“Hear that, Mycroft?” Sherlock said in a voice just a bit above his normal speaking volume. “The good doctor agrees with me.” He brought his gaze back to meet John’s. “He wanted me to know he  _could_. He’s always been one for control, my brother.”

“Christ,” John said, feeling shaken.

Sherlock’s eyes were searching his face. “Actually,  _doctor_ , we should probably have a look at that medical kit, come to that.” Sherlock shifted his shoulder uncomfortably and leveraged himself to his feet. “I can’t be the only one feeling like he’s been through the wringer.”

As he followed the other man toward the back of the flat, John couldn’t shake the feeling that Sherlock was planning something.

 

* * *

 

Some time later— _no clock,_  of course  _no bloody clock_ \--John had examined and put fresh bandages on their injuries, Sherlock helping him with those that were too awkward to manage on his own. They were once again in the living room, John sitting on the sofa, Sherlock standing by the window and flicking the curtain with impatience.

John finally forced himself to break the tense silence. “What’s Mycroft’s  _plan_ , do you think? Does he have one?”

“Always, John. He’s trying to keep us ‘safe,’” Sherlock said, all but spitting out the last word and whirling away from the window to face him. “Until he can catch Moriarty. A project with which we’d be a great deal of assistance, by the way,” he said to whatever set of ears might be listening on the other end of the transmitters.

“Well, we can’t just sit about here, can we? We’ll have to—“

“ _God_ , John.” Sherlock was pacing again, eyes wide and unfocused, hands moving haphazardly about himself, tugging at his sleeves and smoothing his hair. He wasn’t even really speaking to John anymore, his voice a low, muttering growl. “I’m going to kill him, absolutely bloody  _kill_  him, d’you hear that Mycroft, you can’t do this, not again….”

Just as suddenly as he’d started, Sherlock stopped moving. His legs seemed to fold under him and he collapsed to the floor, cradling his head. John was at his side in an instant, extending a hand in an effort at reassurance. Sherlock flinched away from his touch.

Sherlock’s eyes, when he raised them to John’s, were shining too brightly. “I can’t do this again, John,” he said in a low, broken voice. “I can’t, can’t, I just….” His breath was coming too rapidly, and the look in his eyes was one with which John was all too familiar. John could feel the heat radiating off the thin shoulder when he replaced his hand, slowly; Sherlock didn’t move away this time.

“It’s okay, you’re okay, just breathe,” John murmured, keeping his hand steady as Sherlock rode out the panic attack. He never would have imagined this a few days previously, but now, seeing him here and his reaction to this place, John wasn’t surprised.

 _Don’t even think about it_ , he admonished himself sternly, feeling the ominous beginnings of a sympathetic anxiety lodging itself below his ribcage.

It seemed like hours passed before John felt Sherlock’s breathing steady in his chest. Finally the other man gave something like a weak laugh, and John squeezed his shoulder before leveraging himself to his feet, muscles protesting, to retrieve a glass of water which Sherlock proceeded to sip at cautiously.

“Haven’t had that happen in a while,” he said, finally, with an embarrassed quirk of his lips. His cheeks were still unusually flushed, but he seemed to be coming back to himself.

“Understandable,” John said, keeping his tone as light as possible. “And you’ve seen me as well. So.” He shrugged. “I didn’t see anything in the kit, but I can check again, if you think—“

Sherlock shook his head. “No, there wouldn’t be. Habit-forming.” There was that quirk in his mouth again.

“No, of course not,” John answered, and a flush of anger shot through him. Mycroft must have known what this situation would do to his brother ( _and to me_ , but he pushed that thought aside immediately), and yet.

Sherlock looked up at the tone in John’s voice. “Mycroft,” he offered in explanation or apology, and John snorted.

Sherlock managed a sound that was almost a laugh, and leaned back against the seat of the sofa. “I think we could both stand to get some sleep,” he said, swallowing a yawn. The words seemed to unlock something in John’s body; he could suddenly feel the weight of an overwhelming exhaustion.

He managed to make it back to the bed, but not so far as actually undressing, before he fell into sleep.

 

* * *

 

Three days later, John woke screaming.

The intervening time had passed largely uneventfully, unless one counted Sherlock’s deteriorating mental state as an event. He’d had four more full-blown panic attacks in that time (that John had witnessed—he suspected there may have been more while he slept), and spent the rest of the time in a fit of anxiety, pacing and muttering to himself as his fingers scratched at invisible imperfections on his skin. Most of the time he reacted to John with irritability, interspersed with occasional periods of almost-apologetic embarrassment.

And, always, those pale eyes flicking over John’s face, as though he could read something there.

John, for his part, had tried to settle into the practicality of their new day-to-day reality. He focused on treating their injuries and trying to make them both as comfortable as the situation might allow. He was forced to acknowledge that “comfortable” included keeping Sherlock sane, which was becoming increasingly difficult.

Occasionally Sherlock had outbursts of anger, yelling at unseen observers and throwing things to the floor. John resisted the urge to join him in the yelling, and cleaned up the resulting mess. “I’m so bored I can’t even  _think_ ,” Sherlock shouted at him the one time John admonished him, and John decided not to pursue that line of conversation.

If he were honest with himself, he’d have to admit that Sherlock was making him actively nervous. There wasn’t anything particularly dangerous in the flat—no knives or scissors, at least—but John certainly knew there were plenty of items that could be turned into weapons. He eyed the mugs, considering how much damage a jagged piece of ceramic could do if wielded by the handle. The one time Sherlock broke a mug, John meticulously ground every last bit of it into powder under his heel before disposing of it, just as a precaution.

Sherlock watched him do it without comment. Their eyes met, and Sherlock nodded in acknowledgement. John didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified that the other man seemed to understand what he was doing, what he was trying to prevent.

When John screamed himself awake on the morning of the fourth day, Sherlock was at his side almost immediately. The pale eyes were solicitous, the cool hand rubbing comforting circles on his back, as John regained his equilibrium in the stark room.

He’d been dreaming of Afghanistan, of course; the two nights he’d spent pinned down with two injured soldiers on the far side of a great deal of the wrong set of armed men, with no supplies to speak of and no way to get them to safety. One of the men had died under his hand. The tension and helplessness of those days were so fresh in his mind when he awoke that it took John several minutes to convince himself that he really was in London.

Then he remembered just  _where_  in London, and slapped his open palm against the mattress in frustration. He squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to take five long, deep breaths.

When he looked, he saw Sherlock’s eyes on his face.

“Just dreaming,” John said finally, and managed something that was a great deal like a smile.

“Yes,” Sherlock said, thoughtfully. “To be expected.”

“Yeah,” John agreed. “Er, sorry. If I woke you.”

There was a long pause, then: “You didn’t. Breakfast?” Sherlock offered, and it sounded like an apology.

 

* * *

 

Two days later, it happened again.

The dream started out the same—two wounded soldiers, wrong side of the wrong line, no supplies, no plan—but didn’t get as far as Pearson’s death before the source of the danger shifted. John knew there was an enemy in their makeshift shelter; he felt someone grasp his shoulder and swung his arm around to aim his pistol—

John jerked from sleep hearing the tail end of a shout from his own throat and felt his arm connect with something solid. As his vision cleared he saw Sherlock lying against the low bureau. His eyes were closed and there was blood coming from both his nose and the side of his head, above and just behind his ear.

“Oh, shit,” John muttered, trying to disentangle himself from the blankets. “Shit shit shit.”

Sherlock’s breathing was steady but his pulse was fluttering when John pressed his fingers against it. Nothing John did got any response from the pale figure. “Oh, god _damn_  it,” John said, cursing himself and casting his eyes about the room for something to press against the wound. Nothing was at hand; in annoyance he grabbed one the pillowcases and knotted it into a makeshift bandage, tipping Sherlock’s head forward so the blood could run freely out of his nose.

John sat back on his heels, considering. Odds were good Sherlock would be fine, if maybe a bit concussed, but he hadn’t hit his head that hard, and really ought to have come to almost immediately. It really wasn’t a good sign that he was still unconscious.

John was altogether fed up with this whole scenario,  _playing pet doctor to Sherlock at Mycroft’s whim, with no resources and no……_

Then it hit him. John firmed his mouth and eased himself to his feet, feeling a sense of resolve settle over him.

“I’m sure you saw that, Mycroft,” he said calmly to the invisible ears. “He’s bad off. Needs attention. But I’m not doing this anymore. This one’s on you.”

For the first time in his medical career, John turned his back on a wounded man. He calmly walked out of the room and into the living room, where he settled on the sofa to wait.

He didn’t have to wait long. It couldn’t have been more than six minutes before he heard footsteps in the hall—the first he’d heard in all the time he and Sherlock had been there—and then the sounds of the door to the flat swinging open.

 

* * *

 

The awakening was more gradual, this time, and John’s head pounded with such a fury that he actively tried to slip back into unconsciousness. Unsuccessfully, to his annoyance.

Finally he groaned and sat upright, swinging his legs off the side of the now-familiar bed and rubbing his temple. His head stopped spinning after a few moments and he pushed himself to his feet.

The flat was empty.

 _Should have known it wouldn’t be that easy_ , he thought to himself in annoyance. He stood in the doorway to Sherlock’s room, gazing at the empty, neatly-made bed, and smacked his hand against the doorframe in frustration.

They’d come into the flat—four of them. Nondescript men, only one of whom had spoken. Two had immediately headed back toward the bedroom, and two approached John. He hadn’t seen the syringe until it was too late. Hadn’t been expecting it.

Mycroft’s policy was, apparently, to inject first and explain later. “He’ll be taken care of,” the man in the green button-down had said, and then John felt himself being eased back onto the sofa cushions, and then nothing.

“Too much to hope that they forgot to lock the door, I suppose,” he said to no one. He tried it, feeling silly. They hadn’t forgotten.

 

* * *

 

Over the next few days, John adjusted. He expected Sherlock to be returned in fairly short order, and wanted to take the time to himself to get his thoughts together.

Things were both easier and more difficult with Sherlock gone. On the one hand, he wasn’t quite so worried about being murdered in his sleep. On the other, though, without Sherlock there to serve as counterweight he felt his own anxiety much more keenly, and he had no one to talk to. Unless, of course, he wanted to talk to the bugs.

He tried that, a bit. He said a few things he wasn’t proud of, made some threats that probably weren’t, strictly speaking, productive contributions to the situation.

After three or four days (he was starting to lose track, which worried him more than he wanted to admit to himself) John began to doubt that Sherlock  _would_  be returned. He hadn’t been that badly injured, after all—John would never have walked away from him, had he been—it was just a bloody nose and a bump on the head, unless there was some aftereffect of the injuries from the bombing,  _Christ, just don’t think about that_.

Right. Okay.

On his own, then. For a while. For now, at least. He didn’t want to think further ahead than that.

John’s mind danced around the memory of Sherlock’s face, his friend’s disconcerting assertions of  _four months_  and  _just to show he could_. He couldn’t possibly, Mycroft _wouldn’t_ , it was absurd, unthinkable.

No telly or radio or computer, but there were books. It was something. He tried to read, but found both hands shaking so badly that the pages fluttered. Cooking was downright hazardous. The horrible fluttering anxiety never left his chest, anymore; John tried to ignore it, but had little success in the absence of other things on which to concentrate.

The dreams started in earnest a week after Sherlock was taken.

John would wake gasping, sweating, shouting, limbs tangled in sheets. Once, he woke on a bare mattress to find that he’d somehow pulled and twisted all the sheets into a pile on the floor beside the bed. It was always the same dream, or a variation on the same dream: pinned down, separated, Pearson slipping away, nothing to be done.

Waiting, both awake and asleep, for a resolution he wasn’t sure would ever arrive.

He took to shouting at the walls. Damn Mycroft, let him hear what he wanted. John didn’t care what he thought anymore.

He slept less and less, lost track of the days as his schedule became increasingly irregular. His appetite was all but gone, and he found himself going long periods of time without food.  _I must miss the bastard if I’m turning into him. Or the other way round. I wonder if I could devise an experiment from what I’ve got here? Probably nothing interesting, idiot like me,_  John thought, mocking himself ruthlessly, trying to hear the thoughts in Sherlock’s tone, just to have another voice in his ear, as he slathered a piece of toast with a thick layer of jam. It didn’t sound right, which bothered him more than he thought it should.

Food and supplies appeared in the flat while he slept. When he slept. He never ran out, at any rate, and before long he gave up on trying to catch whoever it was. He didn’t want them to  _stop_ , after all. John did some mental calculations: he could survive for three weeks without food. If they stopped now, what would happen first, starvation or madness? He wondered if he were capable of choosing one to prevent the other, and which it would be.

Mustn’t think like that. Stupid to think like that. Really just altogether not very helpful.

 

* * *

 

“Sherlock said you were trying to protect us. I just thought you might care to know that I’m losing my mind.”

He told the invisible ears this as often as he thought it, which was often. There was never any answer.

 

* * *

 

There was something wrong with Sherlock’s shampoo bottle.

John had tried to use it, just for a lark, a change of pace. It was nearly full—he could feel it heavy in his hand when he picked it up—but nothing would come out of the nozzle. Odd. He unscrewed the cap, and found the problem: more than half a dozen empty blister packets had been shoved inside. The writing was corroded—they’d obviously been in there a while—but it looked like an antihistamine and… something else John couldn’t quite make out.

Curious.

He pondered it for a while—of course he did, it was something to  _do_ —but couldn’t seem to concentrate enough to make any sense of it. A message? A clue? Was there a mystery he was meant to be solving? Maybe it was just some Holmes family tradition, they were mad enough, the pair of them.

 

* * *

 

It would be a great deal more bearable if the dreams would stop.

“He’s not here anymore, you know,” he told Mycroft. “You could give me something to help me sleep.”

Nothing.

 

* * *

 

A few days later: “I wouldn’t take them all at once. I promise.”

* * *

 

John wasn’t so far gone that he’d forgotten about Sherlock ( _not yet,_  he thought ruefully), or stopped worrying about him. His presence seemed to suffuse the flat; when John felt his breath coming short from the sensation that the walls were closing in on him, felt the rising waves of anxiety threatening to crash over his head, he would try to imagine Sherlock’s voice talking him down. He hoped, vaguely, that he was safe, was puzzled that he hadn’t returned ( _had Sherlock forgotten about_ _him_ _?_  It didn’t seem possible. He pushed aside the memory of Sally’s voice: “He’s run off. He does that.”  _Not to me_ , he thought. Hoped.).

He had some notion that Sherlock might be in hospital, or imprisoned elsewhere. He might have become distracted on a case and just lost track of time, for all John knew; he might have chased Moriarty to some remote place and been unable to make his way back. He might be in prison for murdering Mycroft, though that seemed the least likely scenario since John hadn’t been released. The outside world felt farther and farther away with each hour (day? week?) that passed, and John simply couldn’t imagine his flatmate out  _in it_ , navigating the world. It all felt hazy and insurmountably distant.

He remembered, vaguely, demanding of the unseen listeners that he be informed if Sherlock had died. There had been no reply, so surely,  _surely_  that meant he was okay.

(John tried very hard not to think about the fact that he had never received a reply to any of the many, many questions he’d asked or demands he’d made. Surely —and there was that word again--Mycroft would have told him  _this_ , of all things.)

If he were honest with himself, John really wasn’t sure about any of it.

 

* * *

 

Then, one morning, John opened his eyes to see Detective Inspector Lestrade standing in the doorway.

It took his brain a moment to process the situation, which was just as well because it gave his heart a chance to resume beating. His mouth came open. “Greg,” he said blearily, blinking.

“John,” Lestrade said at the same moment, and John was suddenly both overwhelmed by relief and puzzled by the urgency in the other man’s voice.  _No hurry, after so long, a moment to collect himself—_

“Come on, we have to  _move_.”

John blinked again to clear his head, casting one last look around the room that had been his for so long. “Right behind you,” he said, and even he could hear the tiredness in his voice. “But what—“

“Not  _now_ , John. He’s a bomber, remember. We have to go.”

John couldn’t wrap his head around it, not at all, but he could follow orders. Lestrade grabbed his shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze before all but pushing John in front of him and propelling him down the short hallway.

“Good to see you, mate,” Lestrade said with a smile in his voice, and John chuckled in his throat.

“And you,” was all he managed in reply. Everything was moving a bit too quickly after such protracted inactivity, and suddenly they were through the door (the _door_ , at which he’d stared for so long, now standing miraculously open, and before he finished that thought they’d left it behind) and heading down flight after flight of curving steps.

And then they were outside in an empty street, and John could see lights and a line of people behind a barrier at the end of the road, and Lestrade was running now so John ran too.

They reached the crowd and John scanned it, looking for Sherlock, not really expecting to see him. But there he was, standing across the pavement, and his eyes—unreadable as always—met John’s for an instant before breaking away. He nodded to Lestrade and turned on his heel, disappearing around the corner in a swirl of the long coat.

“He’ll meet us there,” Lestrade murmured in John’s ear, pushing him forward toward his waiting car.

They both relaxed a bit once the car was on the road. John found the forward momentum almost devastatingly comforting, felt his hard-won calm beginning to crack apart at the seams. The presence of another person was at least making it a bit easier to think.

“Greg—“ he began, and stopped himself. He wanted answers to so many questions he didn’t even know where to start.

The detective inspector gave a small laugh. “Sherlock’ll have to tell you most of it. He’s been frantic, spent all the time on my heels. Him  _and_  that brother of his.”

“Mycroft?” John asked, the name striking a spark of alarm in his chest.

“Yeah,” Lestrade continued, glancing briefly at John’s face before turning his eyes back to the road. “ _That’s_  a pair whose bad side you don’t want to be on.”

“So… wait, who’s the bomber?”

Lestrade seemed genuinely surprised. “The bomber? That little Irish chap. Sherlock gave us a description,” he added, as though he thought John were worried about that. “We’ll need a statement from you, of course, but—“

“Right.” John rubbed a hand over his face. “What’s today? I mean, how long…?”

“Eight weeks since the bombing at the natatorium.” Lestrade’s tone was cautious. “Three, give or take a few days, since the Yard got involved.”

 _Eight weeks_. 

It was shattering. John was glad he hadn’t realized.

“Sherlock’s going to have to fill you in on the details,” Lestrade said, a bit more forcefully than necessary, and John had a sudden understanding that there were aspects of the situation which the detective inspector had decided, in an official capacity, to Not Know. He nodded.

“Look, d’you need anything?” Lestrade asked. “The plan was to meet Sherlock straight away, but if you—“

John waved it away. “No, no, I’m fine,” he said, and it was true enough that he could ignore the ways in which it wasn’t.

They rode the rest of the way in silence, until Lestrade manoeuvred the car onto a residential street and turned into the drive of a small, unfamiliar building. “Safe house,” he said to John’s questioning look. There was a black car parked in front. “They’ll be here already.”

John nodded and followed Lestrade inside. He had scarcely stepped over the threshold into the small sitting room before he felt Sherlock’s long fingers grasping him by the shoulders.

“ _John_ ,” he said, his voice low and strained. “You’re all right?”

“Yeah, yeah, fine,” John answered, and felt the relief running through both of the like an electric current. And then Sherlock was hugging him, and John thought he probably should have found it disconcerting but all he could think was that it was  _lovely_.

“Let him rest, Sherlock,” came Mycroft’s voice from somewhere over the other man’s shoulder. “Sit down, John.”

Lestrade was already excusing himself for reasons that John suspected had a lot to do with plausible deniability. “You’ll want to talk,” he was saying, “so I’ll just head back to the city, see how my team’s doing with the bomb squad. John, if you need anything.” He gave John a small smile. “We’re all glad you’re okay, mate,” he said, and shut the door behind himself.

Sherlock released John and hurried from the room. John distantly heard the sound of running water, but he couldn’t take his eyes from Mycroft.

“You owe me an explanation,” he said, and even he could hear the edge of steel in his voice. He felt the bite of his nails against his palms as his hands clenched into fists. He relaxed them with an effort.

“Yes,” Mycroft answered thoughtfully, his own hands occupied with the curved handle of his umbrella, which he was turning thoughtfully. “You’ll know some of it already, of course. Please sit.”

“Some of it,” John said, carefully, allowing himself to sink onto the edge of an armchair in the corner, as far from Mycroft as he could get and still be in the same room. Despite his growing suspicion that the elder Holmes’ involvement wasn’t what he’d thought, he was finding it difficult to dismiss the convictions held through so many solitary weeks.

“Yes, well,” Mycroft began, “after the, ah…  _incident_  at the pool, I confess I did intend to take you two somewhere… out of the way.” His mouth twisted apologetically. “As you know, I have access to a great many resources, and try to be prepared for the eventuality that you two might become particular targets. I regret to say that I did not, however, have a tracker on the car in which the pair of you were riding, and when it failed to turn up at the rendezvous point, I’m afraid I was at a… well. A bit of a  _loss_.”

“Failed to turn up,” John said, feeling like his brain was working in slow motion.

Sherlock reappeared from the kitchen. “Moriarty had someone inside Mycroft’s team,” he broke in, “which my brother’s  _intelligence_  failed to detect. Here, John. Coffee.” He held out a mug, awkwardly, and John took it. Sherlock moved to stand behind the chair in which John was sitting, draping his long arm over its back to set his hand on John’s shoulder. “Quite the oversight, Mycroft, wouldn’t you say?”

“It’s been dealt with. The amount of havoc you manage to bring down upon your own head can be difficult to keep up with, even with the resource at my disposal,” Mycroft snapped at his brother. He took a breath and, more calmly, resumed addressing John. “We looked for you, of course, but Moriarty had hacked into the surveillance on that flat and was feeding in an old signal. It appeared to be unoccupied, and there was no reason to suspect otherwise. It wasn’t a location of particular interest.”

John felt Sherlock’s hand tighten briefly on his shoulder. Glancing behind him, the strain was evident on his flatmate’s face. John felt his own face crease into a frown. “Moriarty meant us to die in the pool explosion, there couldn’t possibly have been time to arrange—“

Mycroft sighed. “Evidently he had a contingency plan,” he said, and John almost smiled at the note of—jealousy, was it?—in his voice. “There was a second-in-command. A man going by Moran.”

Sherlock moved swiftly around the chair to crouch by John’s knee. “I was wrong from the start.” He turned to Mycroft. “It would have been a great deal more difficult for him to  _arrange_ , Mycroft, if you hadn’t maintained that bloody flat in the first place.”

“Yes, yes,” came Mycroft’s impatient acknowledgment, and John had a sense that they’d had this conversation many times before. Sherlock made a huffing noise deep in his throat, and Mycroft aimed a glare in his direction. “Later, Sherlock,” he cautioned, in a tone that so thoroughly conveyed  _older brother_  that John suppressed a giggle. He still felt overwhelmed by the shifting situation but the tension he’d held for so long was beginning to ebb away, and he felt almost light-headed with relief.

Sherlock was speaking to him again, his voice so low he might have been speaking to himself had his eyes not been so intently fixed on John’s. “I thought it was Mycroft, at first. Stupid of me, not to see what was so obvious.”

“Understandable,” Mycroft offered from across the room, and John almost laughed in surprise.

Sherlock ignored his brother. “I couldn’t tell you, because of the cameras. It never would’ve worked if they’d had even a hint what we were planning, obviously, but when you walked away I was sure you’d figured it out, I thought you  _knew_.”

“You startled me on purpose,” John said slowly, realization dawning. “You intended for me to hit you. It was a setup.” John could remember, vividly, the unmoving eyelids, the shallow, rapid pulse under his fingertips. ”You weren’t even unconscious.”

“Not at all. I took—“

“The blister packs,” John broke in. “Yeah. I found them.”

“I thought you might. The shower was the only place out of sight of a camera.” Sherlock smiled again. “You’re not an easy man to fool, doctor, and I needed it to be convincing. The nose was a a stroke of luck.” His mouth twisted ruefully. “You actually broke it, if it’s any consolation. I suspect you’d say I deserved it.” John looked and yes, there was a small ridge on the side of the bridge, telltale sign of a healed fracture. “You were drugged, as you know—I wasn’t anticipating that, but of course I still thought Mycroft was behind things at that time—and I’m afraid the legmen did a bit more damage than I’d expected. I barely made it myself, to be honest.” Mycroft sniffed. “So I couldn’t bring you with me. I’d give a great deal for it to have been otherwise, John.”

John managed a small smile that he hoped was reassuring. It wasn’t okay, not remotely, but he understood.

Sherlock continued. “The whole place was wired to hell and back with explosives—“ Mycroft made a warning noise and Sherlock turned to glare briefly over his shoulder. “Oh, shut up, he’ll know soon enough, if he doesn’t already.” He turned back to John. “I was still concussed and hadn’t quite sorted it out myself yet. I planned to find Mycroft and go back for you straight away, but he’d followed a planted lead to Munich, of all places, and it took some time to reach him there. I couldn’t use any of my usual contacts, obviously, because of Moriarty and you still. Well.” Sherlock cleared his throat and stopped, eyes flicking rapidly over John’s face.

“What happened to Moriarty?” John asked, finally. “Lestrade said the Yard is searching for him.”

Mycroft laughed. “I imagine they are,” he said. “He’s… gone.”

“Mycroft’s team did manage to make themselves useful, for once,” Sherlock added with a note of bitterness.

“Dead?” John asked.

“Not yet,” Sherlock said, his eyes darkening.

“We’ve pursued him as far as Norway,” Mycroft said, in that careful diplomat’s tone he used when forced to share information he would have preferred to keep private. “It shouldn’t be long now. Rest assured, he is no longer a threat.”

“But you have his description to Lestrade,” John said, puzzled.

Sherlock shrugged. “A distraction. Once he was out of the country it was safe to contact them—convenient to have backup to round up some of the smaller players—but Moran was running things in London, and we needed to keep him off their radar. I needed uninterrupted access to him.”

“And Moran is—“

“Dead,” Sherlock said, quickly. John looked at Mycroft, who was regarding the back of his brother’s head with a dark, unreadable expression.

“We required some information from him,” Mycroft said smoothly, his voice betraying no hint of the expression on his face, “in order to secure your safe release. He… agreed… to provide it.”

John swallowed. “I think Lestrade knows,” he offered, finally.

Mycroft chuckled. “I daresay he does. He’s not as thick as my brother likes to think. But discretion has always been one of Greg’s strengths. He’s quite good at… compartmentalizing.”

“Drink your coffee, John,” Sherlock said suddenly, and John blinked at the forgotten mug in his hand. “You look dead on your feet, and we’re going to need you on them if we’re to get you home.”

As if that were a prearranged cue, Mycroft stood smoothly. “John,” he said, inclining his head, “it  _is_  good to see you safe again, and you have my apologies for any part I might have played in this… situation.” To Sherlock, he added, “The car will be waiting for you when you’re ready. There’s surveillance on Baker Street—external only, my dear brother, do not  _look_  at me so, your flat was swept just this morning and to do so again so soon would be quite unnecessary—so it will be safe for you to return this evening, should you wish to do so.”

“Thank you, Mycroft,” John said stiffly when he realized that Sherlock had no intention of acknowledging his brother’s departure. He wondered, idly, how long it would be before he trusted the man again.

Then John and Sherlock were alone, and John didn’t know quite what to say. The silence stretched out uncomfortably.

“It was a good plan,” Sherlock said, at length. “It would have worked, if I’d been right about Mycroft.”

“Seemed like the thing to do,” John offered mildly. “Or, what  _you_  would do. It seemed like that.” Sherlock gave a small laugh. “Yours, though. Your plan was to fight with, what, four doses of diphenhydramine in your system? It was a wonder you didn’t start to snore the minute you closed your eyes.”

“And some prednisone, and a great deal of coffee.” Sherlock shrugged, but he was grinning. “Mycroft kept the kit stocked. Bee sting allergy. He worries.” Sherlock shuddered.

“You’re mad.”

“Oh, probably, but it worked,” Sherlock rejoined. Then, more seriously: “Are you?”

John tried not to frown at him, but didn’t quite succeed. “It’s likely,” he said, keeping his tone as light as possible, “given that I seem willing to put up with you. But no, not in the way you mean, I don’t think.” His thoughts still felt horribly disjointed, but just having someone else to talk to had already gone a long way toward putting himself back together.

Sherlock nodded. “I saw some of the surveillance. Moran showed me.” His tone was serious. “And I… remember,” he added a bit more mildly.

John wanted nothing more than to sink back into the cushions of the armchair and sleep for a month. Anything to avoid Sherlock’s gaze. “Yeah, I suppose you do,” he said, finally, because he could think of nothing else to say.

“It was a good plan,” Sherlock continued, and there was a note of admiration in his voice that John wished he hadn’t heard. “Moriarty chose that place on purpose, obviously. Moran told me. He wanted me to break, and. Well. Kill you, he hoped, or hurt you badly. Badly enough.” Sherlock closed his eyes. “When I got out, the plan changed. He wanted to keep you there until you hated me, and then they were going to give you a chance to do it yourself. He wanted me to know you died thinking I’d abandoned you, blaming me for driving you to it.”

John must have made a sound of acknowledgment, because Sherlock opened his eyes again.

“And when I realized you didn’t know about the pills—that I’d planned it—and you walked away anyway… and then it all took so  _bloody_  long.” John watched the long muscles in Sherlock’s throat work as he swallowed. “Did it? I mean. It didn’t work. You’re all right.” It wasn’t phrased as a question, but John knew what Sherlock was asking.

John considered, recalling some of the longer, more devastating nights. It might have worked, given enough time. He wondered how much of it he’d said out loud, and how much Sherlock had heard.

Sherlock had turned his head and tipped his chin up slightly, regarding John down the bridge of his long nose. John knew this was Sherlock at his most vulnerable; when he made a conscious effort to appear haughty, but was too far gone not to let the effort show.

“You didn’t run when you had the chance at the pool,” John said, surprised to hear the words come out of his own mouth, even as he felt everything clicking into place in his mind. He hadn’t consciously factored that in before, but  _of course_ , it was obvious. “Which was mad, by the way. But you wouldn’t have done this time, either, if you had a choice, and you did warn me.  _Could be dangerous_. Hard to blame anyone but myself, after that.”

John heaved a sigh. It was all a bit ridiculous, this being constantly pummelled and punted about in his flatmate’s name. He resolved to start some trouble on his own account, when he felt up to it. Maybe invade some impossible landscape or other, just on the principle of the thing.  _Just something to get me out of the flat_ , he thought, and found his urge to laugh oddly reassuring.

“Look. I’m tired. Absolutely bloody exhausted, and I don’t have it in me to play therapist right now. But yes, I’m fine, or I will be soon enough. We’re fine. I’d like nothing more right now than to go home, where I intend to annoy you by insisting we leave the windows open all the time. And talking to myself. It’s a charming new habit I seem to have picked up.”

“Mmm. Never underestimate the value of talking to oneself, John. Most intelligent conversation I’ve had all day, most days, though I don’t suppose in your case—“ Sherlock was already on his feet, a smile pulling at one corner of his lips, eyes sparkling with humour and relief.

“No, probably not. Well, nothing else for it, then. I’ll just have to let you borrow the skull.”

John laughed. "They'll think we're both cracked," he said, and the sight of Sherlock's answering grin made the whole notion strangely appealing. It seemed, suddenly, like a  _comfortable_  level of madness. Something to aspire to. 

Enough to be getting on with, at least.


End file.
